Today, there is hardly anyone left at the Erasmus University who has never used ChatGPT, let alone never heard of this open ai bot. It’s safe to say that ChatGPT is the biggest ai bot at the moment and students love to use it. But what are the implications of students using this open ai bot?
Research shows that nearly 90% of students already use ChatGPT for homework assignments (Westfall, 2023). Given that the bot is extremely smart and provides answers in just minutes, it is not surprising that so many students use ChatGPT. But, using ChatGPT creates challenges around cheating, learning, and plagiarism (Westfall,2023). The fear is that students will stop thinking for themselves and let the chatbot do the work for them, without learning anything and not developing critical thinking. According to a recent survey, more than 50% of students consider using ChatGPT to complete assignments and exams as a way of cheating (Technology News Australia, 2023). These figures are worrying and call for action.
I, of course, have used ChatGPT when studying as well and my experiences with the tool are really positive. Sometimes I use ChatGPT as a supportive tool or to ask questions. In these situations, you can compare the usage of the chatbot to the (better) search function of Google. Also, I sometimes use the tool to rewrite some phrases more professionally as English isn´t my native language and my vocabulary is not too big. But, for this assignment I let ChatGPT write my blog about the same subject. This is a part of the blog written bij ChatGPT:
In less than a minute, the bot provided a blog for me about the topic I asked for. Maybe it is not perfect, but with some small changes, I could upload this as my own written blog. If I did so, I wouldn´t learn anything. This should not be the case of course.
But what can we do to avoid this kind of usage? Blocking ChatGPT on school networks would be possible, but students have their own laptops, phones etc. which makes blocking the tool useless (Roose, 2023). Besides, tools that claim to be able to detect the usage of AI-writing tools are not reliable (Roose,2023). But, apart from the fact that it is not possible to block or detect the usage of AI. We need to ask ourselves the question if we want to ban ChatGPT for students and why? Of course, we must at all times avoid ChatGPT taking over students’ work with students being less educated as a result. But instead of avoiding the usage of ChatGPT, I think that we should look at the possibilities of using the ai bot as an extra teaching tool, which won´t replace the student´s work but will be used as an extra. Open AI tools will become better and better and will not disappear (Roose,2023). Maybe it will be used in business as well and maybe students do have to learn how to handle ChatGPT. In my eyes, the way I use ChatGPT in my student life adds something without missing my learning objectives. I do think that students should be able to use ChatGPT in the way we use calculators in math, as an extra tool.
It is clear that ChatGPT can add something for students but, we have to do something about the way students can use ChatGPT. But what? How can we ensure that students use but not abuse ChatGPT? And who should regulate this? Universities, governments or even other instances?
References:
- Roose, K. (2023). Don´t ban ChatGPT in schools. Teach with it. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/technology/chatgpt-schools-teachers.html
- Technology News Australia. (2023). ChatGPT may lead to the downfall of education and critical thinking. Tech Business News. https://www.techbusinessnews.com.au/blog/ChatGPT-may-lead-to-the-downfall-of-eduction-and-critical-thinking/
- Westfall, C. (2023). Educators battle plagiarism as 89% of students admit to using OpenAI’s ChatGPT for homework. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2023/01/28/educators-battle-plagiarism-as-89-of-students-admit-to-using-open-ais-chatgpt-for-homework/?sh=7b626879750d
Hi Ole,
I really like your blog post. We had the same idea: Making students use ChatGPT as a teaching addition, not as a substitute for their own work, in order to preserve critical thinking. Furthermore I agree with you that ChatGPT is often preferrable to Google. One reason is that Search-Engine Optimization (SEO) is hindering the google webcrawlers to find the most relevant information because via SEO, everything looks important to the web crawlers. In contrast, a GPT such as ChatGPT takes the probability of words directly into account and is therefore much more context-based and precise. This makes it a great teacher, which I outlined in my blog post and which agrees with your blog post.
Best,
Patrick